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A CHAT ABOUT 
SAMUEL MERWIN 




Samuel Merwin 



A CHAT ABOUT 
SAMUEL MERWIN 

Containing also a list of his pub- 
lished volumes, together with sundry 
excerpts from critical appreciations 



BY. 

ROBERT CORTES HOLLIDAY 

AUTHOR OF 

Walking Stick Papers, Broom Street Straws, etc., etc. 



Portrait Frontispiece 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 192 1 
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 






Printed in- the United States of America 

M/Sy -8 '22 

g)C!.A674014 - 



A CHAT ABOUT 
SAMUEL MERWIN 

BY 

Robert Cortes Holliday 

ONLY quite recently there has been 
manifest in the United States a 
tendency to possess our own 
authors more fully with our minds 
— to, so to say, take them apart and see what 
makes them tick. You haven't really come 
into the full, rich ownership of an automobile 
until you have tinkered with its innards. 
Same way with books. Just to ride in them 
(fancy way of saying just to read them) 
does not give you anything like the intimate 
regard for books that you get by (in a man- 
ner of speaking) crawling in under them on 
your back and looking up at their works; 
possessing them and their creators more fully 
with our minds. Yes, that is what I want 
to say. 

The English have had this '^possession of 

5 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

their authors" for a long time; they know 
about their popular writers, they weigh them 
and appraise them, give thoughtful considera- 
tion to them and value them for what they 
are worth. 

In this land of ours where everybody can 
read and few do, we dismiss the author as 
a man who has written a book, and let it go 
at that. We like to meet him, or at least 
we like to say we have met him; but when 
we do we don't know what to say to him. 
We feel we ought to talk about his books 
but we are afraid of getting in over our 
heads. If we knew the author as well as 
his books, we'd know better than to talk to 
him about them, and so would not suffer from 
literary stage fright at the mere thought of 
breaking bread with a best seller. 

I have heard it offered as a strange anomaly 
that we remember titles of stories and of 
books, but forget the names of the authors 
responsible for them. It isn't strange when 
you come to think about it. We are simply 
more familiar with the product than we are 
with the producer. We say Linda Condon; 
but when we do we don't register Her- 
' 6 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

geshelmer. You do, of course. I'm not talk- 
ing about the literary in-group; but only 
about the outlander who reads because he 
must — to kill time. 

If he can be given an Interest In the author 
as an author, If he can get through a dis- 
cussion of the man something of a critical 
Interpretation of his work, it would be stimu- 
lating both to the appreciation and the 
production of a real native literature. 

It is a highly pleasurable thing, I think, 
to enjoy one by one the novels of some writer, 
more or less heedless of anything beyond 
their power to entertain, and then, being 
lured (through their attraction as stories) 
Into a more thoughtful scrutiny of them in 
a bunch, to discover that their author is a 
good deal more of an artist than you had 
taken the trouble to suspect — than perhaps 
he is popularly supposed to be. This has 
just been my experience with the books of 
the man I am here venturing to talk about, 
talk much more briefly than I should like In 
considering him and his output. I have lately 
undertaken to put two and two together in 
my head about Samuel Merwin, and I find 

7 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

(very much to my satisfaction) that in his 
case the result is five. 

I cannot say, and certainly I didn't mean 
to imply, that I am the fellow who discovered 
that Mr. Merwin is an American author of 
real consequence. Maybe you yourself found 
out that sometime ago. At any rate, the fact 
was discovered and by a "furriner" too. It 
took foreigners (they tell me) to discover 
the genius of Poe and Whitman. And we 
over here, who are foreigners to them over 
there, first (I have heard) gave substantial 
appreciation to Carlyle and Meredith. How- 
ever all that may be (and I have no thought 
of placing Mr. Merwin in the company of 
the illustrious dead), away back in the first 
month of 19 12, Mr. Arnold Bennett was 
writing in the North American Review on 
The Future of the American Novel. He ob- 
served that "all the minute depicting of the 
thousand forms of local life in America, 
which Is now so prominent a feature of 
American fiction, is a mere preliminary." In 
his view, "the great novels of the future will 
Spring from the action and reaction of place 
on place ancj activity on activity." And 
' ' 8 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

"They will certainly be of two kinds — 
the two kinds that have always persisted and 
always will persist — the purely romantic and 
the romantic-sociological, the Dumas kind 
and the Balzac kind. Of the former two 
clever prototypical specimens that have im- 
pressed me are T^he Short Line War and 
Calumet K, both written in collaboration by 
Messrs. S. Merwin and H. K. Webster. 
Calumet K especially disengages the sheer 
romance that lies concealed, for instance, in 
grain elevators, contract jobs, and wheat 
manipulations." 

Then Mr. Bennett passed on to declare 
that In this kind of thing Frank Norris's 
Octopus "succeeds where M. Zola has again 
and again failed." 

And, by the by, in the way of another early 
"testimonial," I seem to have heard that 
Cyrus Curtis has always given credit to Calu- 
7net K for having had much to do with put- 
ting The Saturday Evening Post on its more 
than a million legs. 

Why is it, I ask myself, that Mr. Merwin 
Is to my own view so interesting a writer? 
First, of course, because I find him so enter- 

9 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

taining. And (to employ our current popu- 
lar colloquial exclamation), How does he 
get that way? 

Well, for one thing. Mr. Merwin Is en- 
tertaining because his books are full of ad- 
venture, whether the scene Is the society of 
flappers and hobbledehoys In a Chicago sub- 
urb, as In Temperamental Henry and Henry 
Is Twenty; politics and newspaperdom In a 
Middle Western town as In The Citadel; 
''Village" life adjacent to Washington Square 
as In The Trufflers, or — perhaps best of all 
— the colorful, mystery-laden, polyglot cities 
of far China : The Charmed Life of Miss 
Austin, Hills of Han, and his latest story. 
In Red and Gold. 

Speaking of adventure pure and undefiled, 
If anybody knows of a book with more ad- 
ventures In It to the square Inch than In The 
Charmed Life of Miss Austin, I wish that 
"anybody" would tip me off. These tales of 
the Quixotic madcap of a slip of an American 
girl who moves through an Oriental scene 
amidst a maze of thrills, saving people's 
lives, setting them on their feet, and never 
quite gettiag' destroyed, have the zest and go 

- 10 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

of Stevenson's New Arabian Nights, and 
Miss Austin is altogether as delightful in 
her way as the celebrated young man with 
the cream tarts whose "spirit, sir, is one of 
mockery." If it is rather difficult to give 
complete credence to such a series of rapid 
fire adventures as are here encountered, you 
at least believe in the people themselves, 
every time. The little character sketches are 
quickly, neatly and very surely done. Though 
Merwin is usually a novelist, and sometimes 
a rather deliberately moving novelist, the 
chapters here are models of the brisk, O. 
Henry type of short story, with a whip 
cracker at the end. 

Then, another thing, literary critics have 
observed that humor is a quality conducive 
to entertainment. This has also been a fact 
of my own experience. Well, diligence is not 
required to discover abundant humor in Mr. 
Merwin. Indeed, I should say that a very 
high degree of diligence would be necessary 
for the reader to avoid being drenched by 
humor in such books as, say. Temperamental 
Henry and Henry Is Twenty, those hugely 
hilarious and scientifically sound stories of 
II 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

a square peg in a round hole. They, the 
first two "Henry" books, have something the 
flavor of Barrie's Sentimental Tommy, some- 
thing the flair of Arnold Bennett's Denry the 
Audacious, but they go very much further in 
their shrewd examination of an exceptional 
boy. Mr. Merwin has carried his abounding 
curiosity even beyond Mr. Tarkington's 
mirror of the phenomenon of adolescence in 
Penrod and Seventeen and has afllicted his 
hero with a temperament of genius as well 
as the idiosyncratic character of youth. Now 
a genius in a book is in this, very like a genius 
in life: it is rarely that you find a real one. 
"Henry," though the expressions of his na- 
ture are perhaps somewhat magnified, is es- 
sentially authentic. 

I should be inclined to say offhand that he 
Is the most deliciously impressionable being 
within the range of my reading. And I con- 
fess that I do not recall in recent books any- 
thing to my mind more amusing than his first 
journey to "li'l oV New York" — in his own 
fancy, a thorough man of the world, travel- 
ing on the most exclusive and expensive vesti- 
buled train in the world, to see the Navy 

12 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

Yard, and Central Park and Dead Man's 
Curve and the Bowery and Doctor Park- 
hurst's church; and bewildered, thrilled and 
frightened by the intoxicating society of no 
less august person than Lillian Russell, picked 
up with such miraculous ease on the train. 
Then the awful crash, earthquake and eclipse, 
and the prodigal's tragic return to Sunbury, 
Illinois. 

Exceptional characters add a great deal to 
the interest of the book. And you run into 
any number of queer coves in the company 
of Mr. Merwin; meet folk you don't see 
everywhere. There, for just one distin- 
guished instance, is the great Carpentier him- 
self in The Honey Bee. And along the China 
coast one consorts in Mr. Merwin's pages 
with all sorts of strange victims of the 
wanderlust — Doane, the fighting, falling mis- 
sionary; Dixie Carmichael from the Barbary 
Coast; Tex Connor, the international crook, 
all to be met in In Red and Gold. Also, 
what is equally beguiling, in these pages you 
find, with the thrill of recognition, a steady 
going and coming of persons that you do 
see every day, a stream of old acquaintances, 
13 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

as it were. Mr. Merwin's American girl is 
all about us. His Middle Western burghers 
— his fictional aunts and uncles, for example, 
have very much the flavor of your aunts and 
uncles and of mine. "Henry's" uncle is an 
excellent case of uncle. And Mr. Wilberly, 
Miss Austin's "uncle by marriage," is con- 
versationally quite lovely as "a practical busi- 
ness man," who always breathed heavily be- 
fore he said anything jocular, offhand. 

Then, it is interesting to have your author 
know intimately a lot of things. Mr. Mer- 
win has surprisingly intimate knowledge of 
a great lot of things; things unrelated and 
widely separated. Anthony, in Anthony the 
Absolute, is, most charmingly, a "bug" on 
the subject of musical notation. A crisis in 
his life is his discovery of one of the old 
stone chimes, the Pien Ch'ing, a perfect 
specimen of the basic musical scale of the 
Eastern world. A piece of art that, Anthony 
the Absolute, of exquisite humor and fra- 
grant aroma, akin, in the charm of its con- 
ception of Anthony's character and the easy 
finish of its style, to Mr. Tarkington's Beau- 
tiful Lady and Beaucaire. And a rapidly 

14 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

moving tale of dark passion and dramatic 
deeds as well. 

Certainly I don't know where you may go 
In books of to-day or any day, to partake 
of the excitement of prize fighting to the 
degree that you can when you walk along 
with Mr. Merwin. Miss Austin's charmed 
life In Shanghai opens, almost, with a rous- 
ing Impromptu pugilistic match. And The 
Honey Bee Is, among a variety of other 
things, an extensive education In the whole 
science of the prize ring, though Its under- 
lying theme Is, indeed, the pathos of the "un- 
sexed female" who does nothing but work. 

Hilda Wilson, of that book, (to continue 
a mention at random of a few of the curious 
miscellany of things that Mr. Merwin knows 
about) in circumstances of a most romantic 
nature pursues a very up-to-date course in the 
care and feeding of tiny infants. A deeply 
initiated view of the business of modern ad- 
vertising is given the reader of The Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim in the offices of Holmes HItt, 
Inc. A decidedly enjoyable and illuminating 
experience it is, too. Mr. Merwin's "drunks" 
— the fool Mayor in The Passionate PiU 

15 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

grim, Crocker, with his murderous obsession 
in Anthony the Absolute, are, like Mr. Tark- 
ington's hard drinkers, scientifically observed 
and well understood cases of alcoholism. 
The escape of the Mayor, in an emotional 
crisis, from the institution where he has just 
about completed a "cure" to the beginning 
of another debauch, is a gorgeous stroke of 
a very knowing irony. 

And so on and so on and so on. What 
I am getting at is this: Mr. Merwin is an 
investigator, a man with an itch for getting 
the picture right, the sort of a person who 
will set his alarm-clock for three in the morn- 
ing, that he may note exactly how milk 
wagons sound going through the streets at 
that hour. 

Persons with a fancy for marking "How 
true!" or something, alongside telling pas- 
sages in the books they read certainly should 
be kept alert by Mr. Merwin's abundant and 
frequently perspicacious commentary. Hy 
(otherwise Henry) Lowe, managing editor 
of My Brother's Keeper, in The Trufflers, 
is classified as a city bachelor, "a seasoned, 
hardened city bachelor." And "the one pros- 
• i6 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

pect that instantly and utterly terrifies a 
hardened city bachelor is that of admitting 
that another has a moral claim on him. The 
essence of bachelordom is the avoidance of 
personal responsibility." Which observation 
has a good deal the ring of some of Somerset 
Maugham's worldly wisdom. A very fair 
little trifle of a "gift book," I think, could 
be got up under the label. The Wit and Wis- 
dom of Samuel Merwin. Though I should 
add that Mr. Merwin does not in any way 
give the effect of posing as an oracle. He 
frequently adopts the diffident device of put- 
ting his sage reflections into the mouth of 
one of his characters, as where he has Miss 
Austin say, "Wonder why it's never the 
good men that are so terrible conservative 
about women, but the bad ones?" When he 
adds, "After which sweeping and curiously 
accurate half truth, she drifted slowly into 
dreamland." 

After his friendly separation from Henry 
Kitchell Webster, Mr. Merwin reacted 
sharply from the business novel and wan- 
dered off into the region of historic romance 
with The Road to Fontenac. This was fol- 

17 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

lowed by The Whip Hand, His Little 
World, a charming romance of Lake Michi- 
gan; The Merry Anne; The Road Builders, 
Drugging a Nation — an expose of the 
opium trade — and then The Citadel which 
was in large part an attempted presentation 
of American political conditions at the time 
of its publication, about 19 12. And his 
political corruption was very corrupt indeed. 
He has continued to be an artist of decided 
sociological purpose. Way on Into The Pas- 
sionate Pilgrim the great rumpus is caused 
by Henry Calverly's simple-minded Inno- 
cence of "local business interests" and par- 
tisan politics. 

Throughout nearly all of his books runs 
a vivid sense of young women as the game 
of human birds of prey, a revolt against "the 
lie about life," a satiric note concerning the 
"pretense of civilization," a disdain for 
"newspaper reputations," and above all, a 
keen perception that life is usually very diffi- 
cult. In The Citadel, Mr. Merwin was early 
In presenting a picture of a personality newer 
then than now, that Is In the "new woman," 
as she was then called, and her pal-like rela- 
18 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

tions with mankind. His studies in modern 
feminine psychology have not abated. That 
genius in practical affairs, young Mr. Widdi- 
combe, gives it straight to Henry Calverly, 
"I tell you, Hen, the one time when you've 
got to be a business man every minute, it's 
when you're with a girl." Miss Betty Doane, 
in Hills of Han, saw in marriage what every 
girl sees — when life Is pressing. And the 
modern spirit, the "real battle cry of woman's 
freedom," is the wheel that makes The Triif- 
flers go round. 

Mr. Merwin Is not, of course, a novelist 
who puts a caption to his "morals," but he 
has not abandoned the tradition of the great 
days of the English novel, that a philosophy 
of life adorns a tale. And his point of view 
is clear, that the soul's love is best. 

Several years ago a reviewer who is not 
given to exuberant enthusiasms had this to 
say: "In all of Samuel Merwin's novels 
there is apparent a deep insight into human 
nature, while it is evident that with every 
year his interest in the study of characters 
and their development is steadily growing 
stronger. The cumulative effect of his work 

19 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

is beginning to make itself felt, and in him 
we are approaching that long desired result, 
the psychological novelist who reveals to us 
the hidden drama of the mind in the setting 
of an absorbing and even an adventurous 
story." 

A word may very easily be said, and by a 
captious critic a good many words very likely 
would be said, about Mr. Merwin's being 
an uneven writer — most novelists are. He is 
on occasion melodramatic through avowed 
principle, repeatedly declaring that "life is 
more primitive than fiction." I don't know 
exactly what he means by that dictum. There 
are various kinds of life, and there are vari- 
ous kinds of fiction. But I should say that 
Mr. Merwin's drama occasionally is more 
"primitive" as fiction than at other times. In 
this respect I should cite The Citadel as per- 
haps the least successful of his books. And 
to my mind the third of the Henry books, 
The Passionate Pilgrim, is a sad successor 
to the preceding volumes of the trilogy. It 
is somewhat of a puzzle to me how a man 
who had through two volumes so rigorously 
eschewed sentimentality would suddenly ad- 
20 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

mit It in such measure In the third book. 
While some of Mr. Merwin's fights, both In 
and out of the ring, are thundering affairs, 
putting the reader to a tense strain as to the 
outcome, others, the one In the Muscovy 
Restaurant, for Instance, In The Trufflers, 
do not at all, as Miss Amy Lowell says, 
"ring my bell." Also now and then. In the 
midst of affairs which have the ring of pene- 
trating veracity, one comes upon a matter 
which It Is too much of a wrench to accept 
as a probability. I do not refer to halr- 
ralslng happenings. It Is, for example, far 
easier to accept as In artistic truth the wildest 
adventure of Miss Austin, or in Hills of Han 
or In Red and Gold, than it Is to believe that 
Henry Calverly could have written the great 
biography of the Pacific Railroad king. 

One does not, I should say, perceive an 
even advance in Mr. Merwin's style through 
one book after another. That is because his 
style Is a changing medium, adapted to the 
type of tale in hand. In some books It Is 
quick and sparkling, in others moving with 
a steadier current. But his ease and power 

21 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

to-day are far, far away from the early awk- 
wardness of The Citadel, 

Merwln once said: "My professional goal 
is to learn as much as possible about the 
business of writing." That's a key to the 
man's character. He is always learning; he 
always will learn. He will never arrive be- 
cause he will never stop going, or growing. 

And while I am chatting about him, I'd 
better say that nothing comes his way that 
doesn't challenge his consideration. Life first 
and then the technique to transcribe it. Fan- 
nie Hurst said of him not long ago: "Mr. 
Merwin has the faculty of folding and stir- 
ring into his fiction the subtile flavor of ac- 
tuality," which may justify me in observing 
that even in his moments of high romance 
he does not fear to cut into the solid sub- 
stance of real life. 

JV^ho's Who tells me it was at Evanston, 
Illinois, in the year 1874 that Samuel Mer- 
win began his interesting career. He was a 
shy youngster, observing, reticent, thought- 
ful; developing early a fondness for music, 
2C high forehead and a passion for spectacles. 
The niceties, of dress appealed to him; pos- 
22 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

sibly because he saw the impression clothes 
made on the Evanston flappers, for Samuel 
soon realized that if he was one day to write 
The Passionate Pilgrim he could not hold 
himself aloof from the dominant sex. And 
he didn't. He was born into the social life 
of Chicago's famous suburb and he made the 
most of his Inheritance. Men and women, 
regardless of age or occupation, stirred his 
young imagination and aroused his early 
spring emotions. They became his chief in- 
terest in life and have continued to hold his 
acquisitive attention unabated. 

But in spite of his shyness and his glasses 
he was every inch a boy, and so it came about 
that he found, a few blocks down the shady 
street on which he lived, another lad whose 
mind ran along with his, who saw the Evans- 
ton world through the same glasses, (though 
he didn't wear them), who was going to the 
same school and reading the same inflamma- 
tory literature. This lad was Henry Kitchell 
Webster. 

When the Northwestern University turned 
these boys out to sink or swim they were 
bound together by a common ambition which 

23 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

very shortly disclosed itself to the world in 
The Short-Line War and Calumet K. The 
success of these initial excursions into the 
fastness of fiction settled the future for both 
these, by this time, young men, and though 
they dissolved the literary partnership, each 
to fight his own fight in his own way, they 
held firmly to their boyhood friendship, to 
their mutual admiration. The disintegrating 
years have only worked to strengthen these 
binding ties. 

Speaking of his beginnings, Merwin has 
said: "I didn't have a cent when I started 
out to write. I had taken special courses at 
Northwestern and was doing some work for 
the newspapers. Then I wrote several comic 
operas and fooled around with that game 
to some extent with my 'Tom Brown' friend, 
Henry Kitchell Webster, staging plays in 
which I always took part. 

''When I was twenty, one of the operettas 
attracted the attention of a Chicago paper 
and for a time I thought seriously of becom- 
ing a comic opera comedian. However, I 
stuck to writing. This successful musical piece 
was called The Medicine Man. Perhaps 



SAMUEL M ERWI N 
you will remember it was produced back in 

1897? 

"My friendship with Henry Kitchell Web- 
ster has been a most amazing one. As boys 
we grew up together. During the short 
time we were in high school we worked on 
the school paper, and wrote many foolish little 
skits together. I turned out a few stories 
and sent them to the YoutWs Companion. 
The first that brought me any money was 
sold to the Irving Bacheller Syndicate for 
fifteen glorious dollars. I had almost de- 
cided to accept a job with a big harvester 
company, go into business for all time and 
let literature struggle along as best it could, 
when The Youth's Companion bought one 
of my stories and sent me a check for thirty- 
five dollars. That settled me for good, or 
bad, in the writing game. The harvester 
company lost what would have been a thor- 
oughly inefficient clerk. 

"Finally I got enough money to take me to 
New York, and while I was there I tore 
off a lot of stuff and sold it to McClure's, 
The Youth's Companion and other publica- 
tions. In the meantime, Webster, who had 

25 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

been teaching in New York State, came back 
to Evanston, and, as of old, we joined forces 
and wrote the novel. The Short Line War. 
It was the first of the so-called business ro- 
mances. Then we did Calumet K which ap- 
peared in The Saturday Evening Post. 

"Strange parallel, Webster's life and mine. 
There is less than a year's difference in our 
ages. While both very young, we inaugu- 
rated one of those until-death-do-us-part 
friendships. We married college room- 
mates, and our children came within a year 
of each other. 

"In 1901, Mrs. Merwin and I spent a year 
in France. At the end of our visit, the 
Websters came over and took the house we 
had occupied. There have been long periods 
when we haven't seen each other, yet our 
lives ran along together surprisingly alike. 
We broke out about the same time, he 
in The Saturday Evening Post and I in 
McClure's. 

"Then each of us did a novel, neither 

knowing what the other was doing. Another 

time he wrote a story called The Butterfly 

and I wrote one called Anthony the Absolute, 

' . 26 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

and when the stories were printed they were 
strangely similar. His was told by a pro- 
fessor, and mine by a scientist; mine was 
about a young woman singer and his about 
a dancer. 

"His novel, The Real Adventure and mine, 
The Honey Bee, were so completely opposite 
that two men might have been writing the 
same story — one pro and the other con. 

"The two youngsters back there In Evans- 
ton swapping Ideas, years ago, certainly 
showed In our later efforts." 

Webster's Inclination to "stay put" devel- 
oped, and has held him firmly and happily 
to his native soil. Merwin's tendency to In- 
qulsltlveness grew beyond control; he broke 
camp and went out to meet experience half- 
way. New York swallowed him; Success 
(the magazine) broke him; hard necessity 
drove him! He fled to China, sent back a 
book on the opium trade, came home by way 
of Paris, and after several localizing experi- 
ments, he found his complement — his perfect 
state. In Concord, Mass. 



IN RED AND GOLD 

MR. MERWIN can always be counted on 
to give us an interesting story. No 
listener nods in the chimney corner when 
this famous teller of tales lights his pipe and sets 
out on a "Once upon a time" voyage. This reputa- 
tion is more than sustained by his latest romance — 
In Red and Gold. Indeed it is brilliantly height- 
ened, for the moment you set foot on the Yen Hsin, 
which you do on page one, and begin the thrilling 
and picturesque journey up the great Yangtze River 
to Hankow, from that moment you are wholly ab- 
sorbed in your fellow passengers, and deeply en- 
grossed in the drama they enact. You are given a 
place at the Captain's table where you meet two 
school teachers from the States ; a Manchu Princess, 
dressed in Fifth Avenue clothes and carrying home 
a sheepskin from a Massachusetts college; an inter- 
national crook, who claims the world for his hunt- 
ing-ground ; a millionaire seeking rest and invest- 
ment; his son, weak and bad until strength and 
goodness are demanded of him; a girl from the 
Barbafy Coast, who neither looks it nor admits it; 
the first- mate, whom you met in Hills of Han but 
28 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

wearing a different cut of clothes; and the old 
Viceroy who, under sentence of death, is on his 
way to his ancestral home in order that he may 
finish his life in proper dignity — as fine and noble 
a figure as you will meet in life or in literature. 

With this company of conflicting characters and 
motives; in this intimate setting, on the greatest 
of rivers, rich in memories of the endless human 
drama; with a revolution brewing, and the plans 
forming for a great jewel robbery, what chance is 
there for a drab or a dull moment? 

It may be said by some that Mr. Merwin has 
shown China at her best and America at her worst ; 
but surely we are big enough to be told our faults, 
while nothing could be more opportune in a political 
way than the lights he gives us on China's virtues, 
upon her proffered gifts to Western civilization, on 
her art, her poetry, her patience, her philosophy. 
That Mr. Merwin's knowledge is intensive, his 
sympathy and admiration great, no one can deny. 
He doubtless believes that "one of the worthiest 
tasks left in the world is to explain the East to the 
West." Certainly with seriousness and sincerity he 
does his bit in this most engaging of all his 
romances. 



THE HONEY BEE 

"The author has given to the study of the emo- 
tional life of a modern business woman most careful 
workmanship. The story is a singularly complete 
one. There are no loose ends to this narrative. Every 
development of plot is thoughtfully worked out, 
every event occurs naturally, yet all contribute to 
a completely rounded, intense and tragic story. 
Every sentence has its relation to the tale as a whole. 
Characters are wonderfully consistent and glowing 
with personality. Even those individuals who flit 
out again are vivid and arresting. Above all, it is 
not a hysterical story. The modern business woman 
is not hysterical. She rises above her sisters of 
whatever class in poise. She may suffer, she may 
even collapse, but she does not weep nor rend the 
air with lamentations. Yet she is a woman all right, 
every inch of her. Mr. Mer^vin has been just to 
the type." — Baltimore Sun. 

**A decidedly unusual novel it is, and one of 
■obviously feministic import. The humanizing of 
an American business woman under unconventional 
and bohemian .circumstances is the theme, and the 

30 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

author deserves credit for carrying his story to its 
logical and consistent conclusion instead of begging 
the question by weakingly marrying his heroine to 
some eligible man as the customery sop to those 
sentimental souls who sternly demand the conven- 
tional romance." — Philadelphia Press. 

"While the Honey Bee is a problem story, what 
is more important, it is a deeply human story of 
a dramatic year in a woman's life. For the most 
part, Paris is the scene of action, with a manly 
pugilist and minor singers and dancers of the halls 
furnishing Hilda distraction for a while. From 
the first Mr. Merwin has shown marked facility. 
He has supple technique now, and with the under- 
standing of humanity that makes his characters be- 
lievable things. The Honey Bee is the best thing 
he has done." — Boston Herald, 

"It is an interesting, well-written story, full of 
amazing hints of the workings of a woman's mind 
and the aspirations of her soul. It may be the 
reflex of an actual woman's life, up to a certain 
stage, but it is so embellished with Mr. Merwin's 
imagination that it may be accepted as wholly a 
work of fiction, behind which is the author's purpose 
to show by what a narrow wall woman's mortality 
is after all immuTed."~Philadelphia Record. 

"Once in a while there comes a novel which is 
so distinctive that it rises far above the common 

31 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

level even of good fiction and assumes a permanent 
place in current literature. Such a novel is The 
Honey Bee, by Samuel Merw^in, whose Anthony the 
Absolute, W2is a surprise to those who had followed 
his successful career. It is a study in feminine 
psychology, which is so just and so true that one 
wonders how a man could have written it. . . . 

"The great charm and the power of this book 
is in its excellent characterization and especially of 
the heroine. The book reads like the autobiography 
of a human soul that has experienced much, but has 
not yet found itself. This is the best novel of the 
spring and one of the best of recent times." — 
Philadelphia Inquirer. 

"A mark of high credit must be given for the 
quality of The Honey Bee and the admirable man- 
ner of its telling." — New York World. 

"The Honey Bee is richly suggestive of searching 
thought — withal it is a most excellent, a most read- 
able novel, admirably well constructed and well 
written." — New York Tribune. 

"The description of the prize fight between 
Moran and the redoubtable Carpentier, the en- 
thusiasm of the vulgar Mrs. Huybers, wife of 
Moran's manager, the bewildering emotions at con- 
flict within Hilda as she watches, makes one of the 
most interesting passages in current fiction." — Los 
Angeles Sunday Times. 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

"The book is a serious contribution to the dis- 
cussion of the complex question of woman's new 
status. It is richly suggestive of searching thought, 
but withal it is from first to last an excellent, a 
most readable novel, admirably well constructed and 
well written. Incidentally it may be mentioned to 
amateurs that Mr. Merwin's description of the great 
championship prizefight between Carpentier and 
Blink Moran is worth their while." — New York 
Tribune. 

"The social problem presented by the woman in 
business is the main theme of Samuel Merwin's 
The Honey Bee a story of real distinction, owing 
to its charm of style, novel atmosphere and presenta- 
tion of a situation that must be ever-present in the 
business world since women have invaded that world 
in such numbers and with so much success. Mr. 
Merwin's book is decidedly novel and unusual. His 
pictures of the problem of woman in business are 
wide enough to cover their moral and ethical aspects 
with a solution that may be said to be inevitable, 
granting the kind of woman Hilda is. His sketches 
of life in Paris are as stimulating as the very air 
of the city of Light itself; while his portrait of 
Blink Moran — and more especially the description 
of that boxer's fight with Carpentier — is really a 
superb piece of work. And with these excellences 
there is the charm of his English, which makes one 

33 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

feel that another one of our writers has fallen under 
the spell of the great beauty of French prose and 
has reproduced in English not a little of the supreme 
magic of its texture. This is, decidedly, one of the 
finest novels of the last decade." — New York Press. 



THE TRUFFLERS 

"As a careful appraisal of the modern girl it pos- 
sesses exceptional value." — Christian World, Cleve- 
land. 

"The Trufflers, a story by Samuel Merwin, is a 
brilliant author's most brilliant book. Into this 
anarchic society of the Village, Mr. Merwin boldly 
plunges his readers, and here we see how plays are 
made, how bachelor girls live, how a charming 
emancipated heroine can unblushingly receive an 
invitation to elope into an unwedded union, in 
fact how life is lived at its freest by some who 
pose, many who merely talk, and a few who put 
their anarchic creed into their deed. Mr. Merwin 
has skilfully given the argument for both self- 
abnegation and liberty, and has not committed a 
single dull sentence in the course of his demonstra- 
tion." — Vogue, New York. 

*'I will not be responsible for recommending this 
novel to a Methodist audience, but I will confess 
that I enjoyed it and found in it several lessons 
worthwhile." — Methodist Protestant, Baltimore. 

"One of the best and most enjoyable novels of the 

35 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

season, and you will want to read to the very last 
page." — Citizen^ Brooklyn. 

"The author of that masterful piece of writing, 
The Honey Bee, again strikes the note of the un- 
usual, and coins a word that we'll all be using 
before we know it." — Pittsburg Leader. 

"This book isn't a mere story. It is a great novel, 
worthy of Balzac, because it teaches without pro- 
fessing to do so, it illuminates life without priggish- 
ness or preaching. It tells some fundamental les- 
sons in ways that only truth can present. It reveals 
to us that the underlying principles of society are 
correct and that to fight against conventions as if 
they were most important is absurd. In the end 
every human being goes to his own place according 
to heredity, environment, education, will power and 
moral principle. It is an illuminating story of life 
written with unusual power." — Inquirer, Philadel- 
phia. 

"The tall, thin young man meets at a street cross- 
ing a boyishly slender, graceful, short-haired, green- 
eyed girl. They speak. So much for the beginning 
of Samuel Merwin^s The Trufflers. The reader 
is prepared for the conventional novel, his mind 
leaps obstacles and envisages the ending. And in 
so doing he makes a mistake. For Mr. Merwin 
is not a. conventional novelist. If he is not a realist, 

■ ' '. . 36 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

he is at least an observer at close range of certain 
aspects of life; he understands how certain types 
react and especially does he know how to portray 
an impressionable young egoist with a touch of 
genius." — Indianapolis News. 

"Mr. Mcrwin has written an interesting novel. 
Praise is due him. He is an advocate of real life 
and writes about it with an originality that is 
unique, withal carrying through the book a thorough- 
ness that admits of no erotic forms of situation. He 
has proved in The Trufflers that the exceptions of 
the human species (which are his characters) have 
surface values only and that underneath the super- 
ficial aspects of character we are all alike." — Pitts- 
burgh Sun. 

"The author writes with unusual directness; he 
gives the arguments for and against the modern in- 
dependence of woman ; he describes many familiar 
and many not so well known bits of New York; 
he props up the Greenwich Village legend ; he paints 
some picturesque figures, male and female; above 
all he jeers amusingly at many things, and presents 
us with a girl that can be liked through all her 
blunderings and a lover that is wholly satisfactory. 
It is a graphic picture." — New York Sun. 

"Mr. Merwin's picture of his region and his people 
is impressive. He treats of certain strong tendencies 

37 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

in urban life that look attractive, but which In prac- 
tice are of life's direst dregs. The warning is not 
untimely. But the lesson is not alone for the 
feminine seekers of liberty. There are many mascu- 
line 'trufflers,' and the irony of the story lies in 
the revelation that the chief 'reformer' of the idle 
women of the village, the loudest declaimer against 
the 'trufBer' is himself the greatest 'truffler' of them 
2\\r— Philadelphia Record. 

"The quality that gives The Trufflers its deep 
Interest and vitality as a story is Its fine fairness, 
Its admirable balance. There can be no doubt about 
the author's personal sentiments and views, but he 
never once distorts his drama of human relationship 
arbitrarily to strengthen his own viewpoint. But 
the reality of his Sue Wilde, his Zann, his 'Worm,' 
his Hy Love and of Peter Eric Mann — above all 
of the last named — ^wIU be recognized Instantly by 
all who have encountered their prototypes In daily 
Viitr— Philadelphia Press. 

"The Trufflers has plenty of Incident, some excit- 
ing moments, and more than a few touches of satire, 
but it Is primarily as the study of the modern girl 
that it commands attention. It is in many ways a 
much better novel than The Honey Bee, clearer In 
thought, less drawn out, more convincing. With 
The Charmed Life of Miss Austin, Mr. Merwin 

• 38 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

proved himself possessed of an unusual amount of 
sympathy and insight regarding that complicated 
person we call the modern girl. These qualities of 
his have grown and developed, with the result that 
in The Trufflers, we have a thoroughly worth-while 
book, sane, unprejudiced, spiced with humor, holding 
one's interest from the first page to the last — a novel 
which can not only be read, but even re-read with 
pleasure and profit." — New York Times. 

"In Sue Wilde, the heroine of The Trufflers, Mr. 
Merwin has presented with sympathy and with 
understanding a fine type of the modern girl who 
revolts and seeks freedom, welcomes with young, 
whole-hearted enthusiasm doctrines which seem to 
be embodied truth, makes of them a religion — and 
presently dicovers that there is often a gulf between 
fact and theory, that there is sometimes a 'lot of 
bunk in this freedom theory,' that the majority of 
the really admirable men and women 'aren't wor- 
ried about their liberty,' while with the others it 
is very often 'all words.' Sue has a conscience; 
she has been honest in her beliefs, and when she 
finds out that for her at least it is impossible for 
her to put into practice 'the kind of freedom' she 
has been talking about, she makes a sincere and 
determined efiFort to find herself. In this attempt 
she turns to the other extreme, only to realize that 
suppression and denial have their dangers, too, that 

39 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

the new spirit of freedom has a contribution to make 
quite as valuable as the Puritan tradition. She is 
both a type and an individual, a vivid, ardent, plucky 
creature, enthusiastic, spirited, honest vv^ith that 
most difficult kind of honesty — the refusal to de- 
ceive one's self." — New York Times. 



TEMPERAMENTAL HENRY 

**If Samuel Merwin's new novel, Temperamental 
Henry J did nothing more than shock us out of our 
blind and middle-aged complacency it would justify 
its existence. But it does this and a good deal more 
besides, for it introduces us to half a dozen young 
people who prove so unconsciously entertaining and 
so tragically amusing that we forget to pay our 
income tax. And these really are young people. 
Henry is only eighteen, and Clem and Ernestine 
and Martha and the rest are younger. Henry isn't 
the twenty-seven-year-old hero who has drained the 
cup of life and speaks in clever cynicisms; nor the 
typical bad boy of fiction who melts limburger cheese 
on the schoolroom stove. Henry is an individual 
with a distinct personality and Mr. Merwin has 
analyzed him with all the loving care that he might 
have given to the most complex man of the world. 
As a result Henry lives for us and we live for him. 
We know him and sympathize with him, love him 
and laugh at him, and recall the boy in our 'crowd' 
who played the guitar and who didn't seem to get 
on, except with the girls. But Henry isn't all the 
story, by a good deal." — New Haven Saturday 
Chronicle. 

41 



SAM UEL M ERWIN 

"A large part of the fun of the book lies in the 
serious and semi-serious love affairs which dot 
Henry's summer. Mr. Merwin seems to have cap- 
tured the very spirit of youth itself in the happy 
go-lucky way in which Henry finds himself in love 
affair after love affair, while at heart he cherishes 
a dim understanding that underneath the momentary 
feeling he does not want these to be serious happen- 
ings, because he wants to be free a while longer. 
And after all there is more than a little seriousness 
under the comedy, and Mr. Merwin has a serious 
intention in portraying Henry's inability to cope 
with what seems on the surface a harmless habit. 
He does not preach, but we can imagine him sug- 
gesting that all the habits which injure the will 
are not those commonly preached against. In fact 
it is these unheroic qualities of Henry which make 
him seem so real and which endear him to the 
reader. The ability to bestow so complete a sense 
of reality upon a character must be acknowledged 
as fine art." — Boston Evening Transcript. 

"This time Mr. Merwin has written his most 
realistic novel of character. It is quite an achieve- 
ment this, creating a hero who is a perfect fool and 
yet making him human and interesting. Curiosity 
makes you read this novel to the very last chapter." 
— Portland Oregonian. 

"Henry is not a mere figment of the imagination. 
• 42 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

Mr. Merwin makes him a decided reality even In 
moments of his wildest eccentricities. One does 
not grow Impatient with him, even when he flits 
from one passion to another and Is guilty of the 
most Irresponsible acts. The author keeps before the 
reader that Henry has 'temperament,' and has 
never learned habits of responsibility or ideas of 
conventional conduct. This Is not an unmixed evil, 
for Henry is always delightfully naive, even when 
most egotistical. Understanding his simplicity, good 
habits and good intentions, plus his 'temperament,' 
whatever the psychological explanation of that 
phenomenon may be, one readily accepts Henry as an 
actual personality whose extremes of moods and im- 
pulsive adventures furnish a most entertaining tale." 
— Springfield Republican. 

"Samuel Merwin always writes an entertaining 
story. It makes little difference what Is his theme 
or his scenario, because Interest Inheres almost en- 
tirely in his characters. He Is a profound psycholo- 
gist, and as people are the most Interesting things 
in the world, he always scores a success. The great 
value of this book Is that it reveals to every man 
the manner of boy that he was himself. It Is an 
amazingly fine analysis of adolescence. In many 
respects this may be deemed Mr. Merwin's best 
piece of work." — Philadelphia Enquirer. 

"Mr. Merwin has done a surpassingly able thing. 

43 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

Henry is a rare creation, and although he is the 
tour de force of the volume, its general truth to 
provincial American society is delicious, while 
Henry's sweethearts are differentiated with rare 
discrimination." — Vogue. 

"The author knows how to enter sympathetically 
into all the emotional experiences of youth and to 
interpret them for those who have long since for- 
gotten that they too were once young. This story 
is one with the dew still on the grass and the bloom 
on the fruit, before contact with this rough old 
workaday world has brushed them ofif. It is full 
of youth's confidence and optimism, alert with great 
expectations and the keenness of an unsated appetite, 
and bubbling over with the sheer joy of living. It 
will bring back vividly to you your own days when 
life was in its springtime and the birds were singing 
in all the trees. It will do you a world of good 
to read it." — Cleveland Christian World. 

''Mr. Merwin has caught the psychology of i8 
with subtlety and sympathy and he makes luminous 
the puzzling mental processes by which youth 
regulates its sprightly journey to the age when life 
is not less serious, but is better understood. Henry 
is a boy who will give readers many happy moments ; 
and the girls who come within his perview will be 
found 'equally entertaining." — Philadelphia Record. 

"Mr.- Merwin has painted with utmost fidelity 

44 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

and not a little humor the raw, quick soul of seven- 
teen. It is really and truly a classic. Willie Baxter 
amused hugely. Henry tickles a little more subtly 
— and it hurts." — Chicago News. 

"Here is a delightful story of a healthy young 
fellow who is just beginning to find himself and 
consequently learns that few people are able to sym- 
pathize with him — except the girls. Yet there is 
such an intensely human tenderness in the presenta- 
tion of the boy's loves and sorrows that no one can 
fail to enjoy the recital of his experiences. It is 
really a refreshing book." — San Francisco Call. 

"Mr. Merwin is very respectful to the youth em- 
bodied in Henry if not always to Henry himself — 
respectful, sympathetic, understanding, and he has 
endeavored, and perhaps succeeded, as far as the 
thing is possible — to reduce to some sort of under- 
standable order the complicated surges of emotion 
and the vague, tangled helter-skelter of motives that 
impel adolescence to action. The story ought to be 
particularly interesting to parents with children in 
their teens. They will probably find out from it 
many things they would never have guessed and will 
have made clear to their understanding other things 
that have been hopelessly mystifying puzzles." — 
Neiv York Times. 

"In this irresistibly delightful story of Henry Cal- 
verly, Mr. Merwin has entered into the very heart 

45 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

of hearts of temperamental adolescence. There is 
not a moment in which Henry is not lOO per cent 
alive and true to life. We laugh at him and weep 
over him; we blame him and we praise him; but 
we always sympathize with him and feel ourselves 
bound by the irresistible spell of youth. His ex- 
travagances never go 'beyond the limit'; he is a 
character, not a caricature. Of course he makes a 
fool of himself, as does every young man; but he 
does so in a decent fashion, clean and self-respecting. 
It is a most engaging picture that Mr. Merwin 
draws, and we bespeak for it a place on the line in 
the gallery of real life." — New York Tribune. 

"Henry is i8, so if you are not too old to care 
any longer for the young people about you and 
their frivolities, why just beg, borrow or steal a 
copy of this book, and if you have not on a broad 
grin before the end of the first episode, you are 
indeed a grouch and there is no hope." — Philadel- 
phia Sunday Despatch. 



HENRY IS TWENTY 

"Mr. Merwin has the faculty of presenting his 
characters in a most life-like manner. The reader 
lives with them and almost feels that he knows 
their innermost thoughts." — Brooklyn Standard 
Union. 

"There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Merwin 
has written in this book a story which has more 
appeal to the majority of readers than had Tem- 
peramental Henry. There is nothing which is so 
essentially pleasing as the story of sudden success — * 
the old instinct for the magic wand which turns the 
everyday Henry of yesterday into the desirable per- 
son of today, the sought-after man of tomorrow. 
This is the story of Henry Is Twenty. It has the 
thrilling magic of success in it. It is all the more 
wonderful because we have read the earlier book, 
seen Henry when he was not wonderful, but only 
a boy with a talent for doing the wrong thing at 
the wrong moment." — Boston Evening Transcript. 

"A study of the struggles, spiritual and physical 
— mainly spiritual — of a boy of 20, is made with 
extraordinary insight and fidelity and much humor 
by Samuel Merwin in his new novel Henry Is 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

Twenty. The hero of Temperamental Henry, a 
previous story, reappears here, but one need not 
have met the boy in that story to enjoy the experi- 
ences of the Henry of the older age. Mr. Merwin 
has gone into the field that Eden Philpotts explored 
in his From the Angle of Seventeen, and that Booth 
Tarkington essayed in Seventeen, and no reader will 
say Mr. Merwin has any apologies to offer to either 
of the distinguished writers for invading the same 
domain." — Philadelphia Record. 

**It is a commendably entertaining book, poignant, 
piercing, palpitant. Possibly there are not enough 
people in the world who are at once unconvention- 
ally minded and sympathetic with aberrancy to make 
such a work a popular success — but one never knows. 
One can only hope that it may reach those who are 
weary of the machine-made hero and can appreciate 
a work of subtlety and finesse." — Reedy's Mirror, 
St. Louis. 

''Inarticulate genius is at the bottom of all his 
difficulties. It is not to be expected, perhaps, that 
his home folk could discern, let alone give recogni- 
tion to, this quality in Henry. But here we find 
the deftness and subtle craft in Mr. Merwin's work. 
There is always present an over- whelming tempta- 
tion to emphasize the ludicrous in Henry's extremes 
of behavior. But the author never loses sight of 
the governing impulse in his hero's character. Henry 

48 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

ecstatically in love, or Henry oppressed with some- 
thing to 'live down,' never cuts a ridiculous figure. 
Even while his erratic behavior drives his friends 
and well-wishers to distraction, there shines through 
his apparent instability of character a quality of 
strength and a yearning for expression that incline 
the reader to patience until the youth's nebulous 
character solidifies and he finds its proper vocation." 
— Springfield Republican. 

"Henry's mad plunge into real authorship is the 
triumph of the book, and is one of the best things 
of the kind ever written. No one that knows Mr. 
Merwin's writings needs to be told that the book 
is charming from beginning to end; but it is more 
than fascinating; it arouses the sympathies, stirs 
the imagination, and makes one gentler toward his 
brothers." — Christian Endeavor World, Boston. 

"Mr. Merwin has no little real knowledge of the 
heart of an impulsive youth of twenty. Henry, as 
we have said, convinces us that he is real; his emo- 
tional responsiveness to feminine prettiness, his 
earnest but blundering efforts to teach his wayward 
self concentration and purposefulness, his alterna- 
tions of callow boyishness and stalwart manliness, 
are true to nature — and appealing." — New York 
Evening Post. 

"In the main, Mr. Merwin treats him with a sort 
of gentle mercilessness for it is evident that he loves 

49 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

his creation as a father loves his son, but he spares 
no uncovering of Henry's guileless heart, raw sensi- 
bilities and over-grown self-consciousness. His in- 
sight into all the quirks and contradictions and 
convolutions of the adolescent mind and soul is deep 
and clear and he makes all that he sees luminous for 
the reader's understanding. But Henry, central 
figure though he is of the canvas, is only one of 
many. The story of his twentieth Summer entangles 
in its threads numerous other characters, men and 
women, and Mr. Merwin tells it all with the finest 
art he has yet shown in any of his novels." — New 
York Times. 

"It is keen understanding of the least understand- 
able period and phases of human life. Thus to 
portray the adolescent and his salad problems may 
seem to some an almost frivolous matter. It is in 
fact a more formidable undertaking than similar 
dealing with more mature aspects of life, for a rea- 
son which must be obvious. And the high degree 
of success which Mr. Merwin has attained entitles 
him to the palm of literary merit." — New York 
Tribune. 

"Mr. Merwin has made an exceedingly fine 
analysis of the psychology of boyhood." — The Inde- 
pendent. 

"The story, to our thinking, is a classic of adoles- 
cence— so keen is it and so sympathetic, so charged 

50 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

with the wisdom and the gayety of age, yet so tender 
to youth, its ignorance, its solemnities. Mr. Mer- 
win laughs at Henry, but the laughter has no sting; 
it is, rather, a sort of indulgent chuckle with a note 
of fondness in it and of pride that is almost paternal." 
— Louisville Post. 

"There is just this difference between Mr. Mer- 
win's Henry and Mr. Barrie's Tommy — the latter 
was sentimental, the former, temperamental. How- 
ever, the terms are fairly interchangeable, only 
Tommy was younger; hence his sentiment was less 
dangerous a trait. But Henry at twenty! Well, 
Mr. Merwin was twenty once and he has not for- 
gotten it; that is the secret of the success of his 
Henry Is Twenty. It comes to you, fresh, spon- 
taneous — it is, in fact. Youth itself. Youth, bold, 
daring, foolish, rash and all the other adjectives 
belonging to twenty, and they cluster about Henry 
as a convolvulus entwines itself about any tree trunk 
within convenient reach." — Richmond (Va.) Jour- 
nal. 



THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM 

"Against a large and dramatic background some- 
where in our Middle West, Mr. Merwin has drawn 
Henry Calverly full length. One is reminded of 
'ten league canvases and brushes of comet's hair.' 
His local color is admirable. Many characters, 
widely divergent, play their parts in shaping Henry's 
life, in rounding it out and bringing it to a happy and 
successful climax. Life is ofttimes melodramatic, 
and Mr. Merwin is not afraid of life. He has 
written many scenes, exciting, poignant and beauti- 
ful. These are unfolded as young Calverly develops 
from a crushed and broken soul into a man of pur- 
pose with hope in his heart and love stretching out 
its supposedly healing hands to him. The Passionate 
Pilgrim is an excellent novel, remarkably well 
done." — Baltimore News. 

**One of the great scenes in The Passionate Pil- 
grim describes the reawakening of his literary 
'power' in the soul of the discouraged genius. A 
big creative idea takes possession of him in a rap- 
'turous flood. He is transformed from craven fear, 
despair, and subserviency into a young god. The 
passion of composition carries with it the mastery 

52 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

of men and of events. The chapters that paint this 
restoration are a splendid piece of writing." — Boston 
Christian Endeavor. 

"The new novel is quiet, dramatic, if you will, 
but quiet, intense, and fraught with emotion. It 
is even occasionally morbid, but in the main cleverly, 
carefully quiet. Thus it has power. It is as though 
the novelist, leaving those shifting currents of life 
in which he used to be tossed, has reached the deep 
water below." — Boston Transcript. 

"Although Mr. Merwin's purpose in writing this 
story was to tell an entertaining story, he goes much 
further. He gives a most remarkable demonstration 
of the psychology of genius, and he expresses, 
through his characters, views on many phases of life 
that cannot fail to awaken the interest of a large 
circle of readers." — Brooklyn Standard Union. 

"Many characters, widely divergent, play their 
parts in shaping this eventful year of Henry Cal- 
verly's life, and many scenes, dramatic and beautiful, 
are unfolded as Henry develops. The characters 
are all human and the scenes are all natural. The 
Passionate Pilgrim is easily Mr. Merwin's greatest 
achievement yet in the world of letters." — Brooklyn 
Standard Union. 

"The Passionate Pilgrim is a stimulating book. 
It is written without affectation. It is direct; it is 
sincere. It would be worth while if only for the 

53 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

Sturdy manner in which it exposes our national 
Puritanism in regard to our great men. It is the 
convincing revelation of this national weakness 
which gives the book its ethical value. It is the 
straightforward manner in which it tells a compli- 
cated and interesting story which gives it literary 
value." — Detroit News Tribune. 

"Having read this book with unusual interest 
and enjoyment, we cordially commend it to our 
readers as a strong, stirring and distinctly superior 
story." — Hartford Courant. 

"A novel that can be strongly recommended to 
discriminating readers in search of entertaining fic- 
tion is Samuel Merwin's The Passionate Pilgrim. 
It is, perhaps, not too much to say that its delinea- 
tion of American Life and character and its glimpses 
into some of our interlocking social, commercial and 
political conditions make it the most striking novel 
of the season." — Indianapolis Star. 

"We have no desire to spoil a superb story by 
telling it. This is one certain to tell itself to a 
million or more appreciative and delighted readers." 
— Los Angeles Examiner. 

"The story is told in Mr. Merwin's usual cap- 
tivating vein, its keen analysis of human qualities 
being true to nature and garnished with a humor 
that is altogether pleasing. The Passionate Pilgrim 

54 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

is a worthy sequel to Its predecessors." — Philadelphia 
Evening Ledger. 

"Mr. Merwin believes that life is largely melo- 
dramatic. Right. He aims to tell an absorbing story. 
He does. He aims to utter, naturally, and in place, 
through the mouths of his characters, views on news- 
papers, modern advertising, American small city 
politics, the writing of biography and a fairish lot 
of other subjects. And he gets away with it abso- 
lutely, or at least 99.44 per cent, of the time. This 
is, in fact, his greatest achievement in The Passion- 
ate Pilgrim because, as any experienced story teller 
will tell you, it is the most difficult essay possible 
in fiction. Fiction and such things don't ordinarily 
mix at all. But Mr. Merwin has been more than 
ordinarily cunning. He has dissolved his powder 
in his potion. You'll hardly taste it. And if you 
do — after all, you may rather like the taste." — New 
York Sun. 



HILLS OF HAN 

"By the time we had crossed the China sea and 
were anchored in the muddy Woosung off Shanghai 
I was ready to admit that Samuel Merwin had read 
wisely and well of the Far East. When he touched 
in an easy, familiar way on Hankow and Peking 
I was willing to grant that he had possibly taken a 
tourist's survey from the windows of the Peking- 
Hankow express. But when we picked up the dusty 
road leading into the Hills of Han my last doubt 
disappeared. On every page I found scenes that 
took me back to the land where I spent my child- 
hood." — Chicago Daily News, 

"The book is merely a mature piece of work, the 
outgrowth of a dozen years of brooding, the whole 
plot being based on hard-earned first-hand experience 
and knowledge. The thing came about this way: 
Thirteen years ago I was sent out to China and on 
around the world by a magazine to make a journal- 
istic study of the opium problem. I spent several 
months in China and during that time traveled up 
the Yangtse-Kiang to Hankow and through north 
central China via the Hankow-Peking railway. I 
wandered through parts of Shansi Province, north- 

' ■. . 56 



SAMUEL M ERWIN 

western China, traveling by cart and mule-litter, 
and sleeping in native inns. At the city of Fai 
Yuan-fu (the Tainan-fu of Hills of Han), I vv^as 
placed under arrest because of a difficulty over a 
passport, and also because I was thought to be an 
investigator or spy for a European mining concern 
which was at that time a cause of trouble in the 
province. I had later to appear before a mandarin 
of high degree, w^ho supplied me with a mounted 
soldier and guard that stayed with me until I got 
back to the railroad, and who went to some trouble 
to inform me regarding the local problems. Thus, 
while I saw no such actual fighting as takes place 
in the story, still the background narrative over the 
trouble with the *Ho-Shan Company' , is based on 
first-hand observation of a similar controversy. At 
one time during my travels in the Chinese interior, 
I spent nearly all of a night listening to the con- 
fession of a missionary who felt that he had chosen 
the wrong calling, but that the discovery had come 
too late in his life. The situation seemed to me, 
even then, to contain the germ of a drama. Many 
times during the past dozen years I have taken out 
my notes of those days and looked them over, but 
the drama ( for Hills of Han seems essentially to me 
dramatic) did not take form in my mind until the 
winter of 191 8-19 19, when it suddenly combined 
itself with some old documents of the gentry and 

57 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

people I had made quotations from while in the 
heart of China during the period following my 
arrest. All in a moment almost the present story 
took form. I sat down at once — it happened to be 
in a New York hotel, and I was supposed to be 
working at a play — and wrote the opening chapters 
straight off. The girl, Betty, stepped into the story 
just as she is. Her father, Griggsby Doane, stepped 
in right after her, full size; and I felt at once that 
I had long known and loved him. Branchey, too — 
curious wanderer — sprang at once into life. And as 
a result of twelve years of brooding in some half- 
glimpsed subconscious region, the whole story very 
nearly wrote itself. It was a joy to do from start 
to finish." — Interview with Samuel Merwin, in 
Boston Post. 

"The definite knowledge of this field possessed by 
the author, coupled with keen insight and the 
dramatic power of producing actual people and situa- 
tions, serves to produce a novel of unusual sub- 
stance and interest." — Washington Star. 

"Unless there is some monstrous falling ofif in the 
last hundred pages of Samuel Merwin's Hills of 
Han, we have at last succeeded in finding an adven- 
ture story which is not written wholly for children 
and moving picture fans. There is incident enough 
in the book to please the most exacting reader, and 

58 



SAMUEL MERWIN 

yet it is all developed sanely and logically." — New 
York Tribune. 

**The most interesting figure in the book is Griggsby 
Doane, who has outgrown the narrow dogmas of 
his evangelical denomination and only through suf- 
fering and what he regards as terrible sin wins 
through to freedom and peace. The interior of 
China, its mandarins with their subtle and devious 
policies and their ceremonial, the point of view of 
young China combining the culture of the West with 
the apathy and fatalism of the East — all this is strik- 
ingly pictured, with the result that the book makes 
an appeal for more reasons than its story." — In- 
dianapolis News. 

"Personally, the reviewer can say that Hills of 
Han is one of those all-night books; once reading 
you must reach the end before you turn to other 
tasks. This is Mr. Merwin's knack, a gift made 
perfect by the practise of more than a dozen novels." 
— Detroit News. 



Mr. Merwin's Novels 

The Citadel The Trufflers 

Temperamental Henry 

Henry Is Twenty 
The Passionate Pilgrim 

In Red and Gold 

Anthony the Absolute 

Hills of Han The Honey Bee 

The Charmed Life of Miss Austin 

THE.BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY, Publishers 



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